


fire and life

by everytuesday



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Accidental Patricide, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Burying a Body, Eliot's dad is not, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, High School AU, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Ted Coldwater is a great dad, basically just a lot of emotions, the entire gang is in this au but they're all mostly in the background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 22:12:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19094116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everytuesday/pseuds/everytuesday
Summary: good friends help you bury a body. great friends bring their own shovel and don’t ask any questions.quentin is a great friend.(hs au where eliot accidentally kills his dad with magic and quentin helps with the aftermath)





	fire and life

Quentin wakes from a dead sleep to his phone _buzzing, buzzing, buzzing._ One bleary eye cracked open tells him it’s still dark out, so it’s either very late or very early and the noise is definitely not his alarm. He rolls over, pulls the cover up over his head, and lets it go to voicemail.

A second after the last _buzz_ , it’s back again. _Buzz, buzz, buzz._

Quentin pokes his head out and slaps his hand across the top of his bedside table, fumbling until it connects with his phone and he drags it across to his ear, scrunching his eyes shut against the brightness of the screen, “What the hell?”

“ _Quentin!”_ The sob on the other end jolts Quentin awake and sends panic flaring through him as he recognizes Eliot’s voice. He scoots himself upright, turning on his lamp as Eliot continues, shouting into the phone now, “Fuck, _shit_ , fuck. Fuck!” Eliot stops and only his ragged breathing remains on the other end of the line.

Quentin slides out of bed, toes curling at how cold his floor is. He stumbles about his room to find a shirt and pants, and in the process finds his voice as well, “El, what happened?”

“I think I--” Eliot stops, pants out another few breaths, then, “Jesus fuck! Quentin, my dad-- _he’s dead._ ”

Quentin freezes with his arms tangled up in his shirt halfway over his head, “What happened? Who-- Are you safe?” It wouldn’t be that hard to interpret Eliot’s hysterics as sounding pained, he realizes, and a fresh wave of alarm hits him. “Eliot, please tell me you’re okay.”

Eliot laughs out a high-pitched, hysterical giggle that chills Quentin to the bone. “ _I'm?_  Of course I’m safe, Q I’m the one who killed him.”

Quentin’s hands go numb and he drops the phone. From the floor, Eliot’s voice, static and distant, call his name. He manages to pull his shirt the rest of the way over his head. He kneels down next to the phone and picks it up between his thumb and index finger, whispering into it so quiet he barely hears himself, “You killed your dad?”

“Like Logan.”

Eliot didn’t kill his dad, then. Not on purpose. Not that Quentin had thought he would, but he hadn’t known what to think about a murder confession being thrown at him in the dead of night. With Logan, Eliot hadn’t known what he was doing and outside of their small circle of friends, no one ever found it was technically his fault. As far as anyone was concerned, it was the result of faulty brakes on a bus and nothing more than a tragic accident.

“They’ll know it was me this time,” Eliot says, as if reading his thoughts. “This wasn’t-- Quentin, can you please come here.”

“I can’t drive.”

“Yes, you can,” Eliot’s voice takes on a more sober-sounding annoyance. “I taught you.”

Quentin gets a flash of memory of Eliot yelling, while Quentin, close to tears with anxiety, drove Eliot’s dad’s car straight into a ditch off a back road. But he’s gotten better since then, at least in theory, and that isn’t the problem. “I don’t have a license.”

Eliot laughs incredulously, “It’s 2am and you’ll be on a country road the whole way. No one’s going to catch you.” And this his voice goes serious, “Quentin, please, I can’t-- I can’t do this by myself.”

“Okay,” Quentin says because it’s  _Eliot._

“Thank you,” he breathes. “I’ll-- Um, I’m going to just--” There’s a shuffling and a screen door creaking closed. “Yeah, I’m going to sit and wait here for you.”

“I’ll get there as fast as I can. Do you want me to stay on the phone with you?”

“No,” Eliot says, and Quentin hears a yes, but before he can say anything about it, Eliot hangs up. Quentin stares at his phone for a long moment and the glowing _04:23_ under Eliot’s name that suggests Quentin just became an accomplice to murder in that precise amount of time.

Quentin shoves pillows under his sheets and grabs the wig Kady got him as a gag gift a few years ago when he’d gotten lice and had to shave his head. He had never worn it then (instead shoved beanies down past his ears and prayed no one would look at him for a few months) but this is the fourth time he’s put it on his pillow just in case his dad checked in on him when he was sneaking out. It hasn’t failed him yet, though he wonders what the consequences would be if it did. And it would be his luck the one time he desperately needed it to work that it wouldn’t. This isn’t sneaking out for a party or to smoke weed with Eliot and Margo at the park in the moonlight. This is important.

Quentin tells his brain to shut up already about Murphy’s Law and forces himself out the door. He carries his shoes in his hand and tip-toes down the hall in his socks, careful to avoid the creaky patch in the floor just past his dad’s room. He thanks whatever supportive deity might be out there that his father is a heavy sleeper and makes it downstairs and opens the door to the garage. He closes it tightly behind him and locks the door again for good measure.

The garage door is open, mercifully. Quentin unhooks a shovel from its hook on the wall, scanning the shelves next to it for anything else that might be useful. He tries to remember bits he’d learned from various Netflix binges and spots a jug of lye. That was definitely somewhere in his memory. He grabs it and a blue plastic tarp, then swings the shovel across his shoulders and carries it all to deposit into the trunk. He starts the car, backs out slowly with the headlights off, then takes off as soon as he gets to the street.

Eliot’s right. The country roads are dead this time of night and it’s a thirty minute straight shot from his house on the edge of the suburbs to Eliot’s farm in the middle of essentially nowhere. He spends the drive death-gripping the steering wheel.

When Logan died, it’d been in plain daylight. A school bus that was nearly stopped suddenly lurched forward and then the monstrous teenager who’d spent the last three years tormenting Eliot went under the wheels and didn’t come back up.

It was the first time he, Eliot, Margo, Josh, and Julia had realized magic was real. And the first time Kady, Penny, and Alice had let slip, oh yeah they’d known this whole time. If it hadn’t been Eliot’s sanity and general well-being on the line, Quentin suspects their group might have splintered over it, but everyone had pulled their shit together. The only thing to do was console an inconsolable Eliot and they’d done their best.

Margo distracted him with lavish parties whenever her parents were out of town, and Eliot usually wound up very drunk and collapsed in her arms by the end of it. Julia went full logic-and-research mode and despite knowing nothing about magic, forced Alice and Kady into helping her, and came up with a theoretical framework for magic and emotions and how Logan’s death was definitely not-Eliot’s-fault. Kady took them all for drives in her jalopy and blasted music so loud they got pulled over, which was the first time Eliot laughed in the aftermath. Josh baked brownies, both of the wholesome comfort and weed varieties. Penny revealed he could read minds and developed a knack for causing a commotion whenever Eliot was on the verge of a breakdown, allowing him to escape unnoticed to a bathroom or stairwell. Alice and Eliot had never been close, exactly, prior to Logan’s death but Quentin had overheard a handful of their conversations and she seemed to harbor a good deal of resentment toward magic that Eliot empathized with.

And Quentin, well-- He isn’t sure how he helped, if he helped at all. Mostly he just babbled awkwardly about some book or tv show or movie while Eliot sat there in silence, drinking stolen whisky, watching Quentin. But maybe companionable silence was enough. Clearly his company wasn’t unwelcome if Eliot is calling him to help him with the next accidental murder.

As he drives up the lengthy entrance to the farm, Quentin is on high-alert. The porch light illuminates the front of the off-white farmhouse and Eliot, sitting at the top of the stairs, long legs stretched out, a lit cigarette clasped between shaking fingers.

Quentin gets out of the car and dashes over to him, wondering where the body is now, but forcing that question down. Eliot’s eyes follow him as he approaches, but he doesn’t move to reciprocate when Quentin reaches out to hug him and stiffens under Quentin’s touch. A fresh bruise is purpling under his left eye.

“I changed my mind. I don’t want you here.” His tone is forcefully careless and he doesn’t look at Quentin when he says it. He takes a drag from his cigarette.

Quentin, undeterred, sits on the porch steps beside Eliot, pulling his knees up and looping his arms around them, fingers clasped together, “I came all this way, I’m not going to turn around and go home now.”

“Just leave, Q,” Eliot says tersely, shifting a few inches away from him.

“You’re in shock,” Quentin says. “You don’t mean that.”

“Get the fuck off my property.”

“‘Off your property’? You sound like a hick,” Quentin shoots back and that earns Eliot pulling himself off the stairs altogether, standing tall above Quentin and scowling. Quentin’s hammering heart wants him to shrink back, but he doesn’t. “Let me help you.”

“I don’t need your help and I think you should forget everything I said on the phone if you know what’s good for you.”

Quentin makes a little huffing noise and he gets up and starts walking to his car. He wants to turn back, to see how Eliot is taking him walking away, but he keeps himself focused and strides to the back of the car, pops the trunk, and pulls out the shovel, the tarp, and the lye. He slams the trunk shut, then marches back across the drive to Eliot.

“I don’t know how you want to do this, but I brought some supplies.”

“You think I asked you here to help me _hide it_?” Eliot’s abrasiveness drops away and he looks surprised and horrified all at once.

Quentin hadn’t considered another option.

“I just didn’t-- _Jesus._  You need to leave. I don’t want to hurt you too.” There’s fear in Eliot’s eyes as he admits it and Quentin’s heart clenches.

“You won’t.”

“No offense, Q, but I don’t really trust your sense of self-preservation.”

Quentin recoils a bit, even though Eliot’s wrong. This isn’t about _that._ He’s not trusting of Eliot because he doesn’t care about whether he lives or dies. There’s just no reason to be afraid in the first place. “You hated your dad and you hated Logan. Do you hate me?”

“No, of course not, I lo--” Eliot stops himself.

“You love me,” Quentin finishes for him. That was it. A simple enough reason but a reason all the same. “I don’t see what the danger is, then. I’m not them, so let’s just do this, okay?”

Quentin offers the tarp out to Eliot. Eliot freezes halfway into reaching for it and for a moment Quentin thinks he’s going to tell him to fuck off and leave the farm. But he doesn’t. He looks back up at Quentin and takes it, giving a short nod, lips pressed together.

They walk up the porch beside each other until the narrow door to the farmhouse forces them apart and Eliot goes in first. Quentin braces himself as he steps inside, but the entryway looks the same as it always does. Blue rug, family photos on the little shelf above the shoe rack, eclectic religious iconography on the walls, and no corpses.

Eliot gets a foot into the hallway that leads back to the kitchen, then stops so fast Quentin nearly runs into him.

“I think if I was a good person, I wouldn’t let you help me,” Eliot says. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“But I am here,” Quentin says and he wants to touch Eliot again, but holds himself still.

Eliot nods, distant, and walks through to the kitchen. Quentin follows.

Blood congealing on the floor hits his nostrils and he nearly doubles over, hand clasped over his face to block out the smell.

Eliot moves toward him, but halts his movement as Quentin shakes his head, “I’m fine.”

Mr. Waugh lies sprawled in the middle of the linoleum floor, eyes open and glassy. He’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt, the only outfit Quentin can ever recall seeing on him, only now it’s drenched in blood. The knife block on the counter is empty and it looks as though the entirety of its former contents are now embedded in his chest, including a pair of scissors. It’s impossible to look away.

Quentin hated Michael Waugh from the first time Eliot came to school with a black eye and a shitty excuse, but seeing him dead on the floor doesn’t bring him the comfort or satisfaction he thought it might.

It’s probably the smell.

“Um, so, we should--” Quentin can’t take his eyes off the body.

Eliot drops the tarp on the floor near them and starts toeing it open, also fixated on the body. After only managing to push it around, he gives up and kneels down, methodically spreading the tarp out, then sits back on his heels, looking between the tarp and his dad’s body.

Quentin stumbles forward in short, jerky movements, trying to get to the other side of Mr. Waugh and help move him. He tries to step up and over, but he’s too uncoordinated and his foot comes down too soon and then he’s standing in a pool of blood that came from his friend’s dead dad and he can feel the stickiness between his shoe and the floor and-- He locks eyes with Eliot and pulls his mind back.

“We’ll burn our clothes later,” Quentin says with more confidence than he feels, moving his foot so both feet are now in the thick of the blood. He steps again, this time getting to the other side of Mr. Waugh, and crouches down, trying not to look at his eyes, “I can, um, we can lift it together and--?”

Eliot reaches around to grab hold of the legs while Quentin grabs onto the shoulders

“On three,” Eliot says, looking at Quentin and he nods automatically.

“One.” -- Quentin looks at Mr. Waugh’s eyes on accident -- “Two.” -- fuck, he’s really, really dead-- “Three.” Quentin forces himself to lift up to match Eliot’s movement. He’s heavier than Quentin was expecting and he stumbles a bit. Eliot compensates for it, clearly anticipating Quentin not being especially strong, and takes the bulk of the weight.

“Take a step to the right,” Eliot says tonelessly. “Your right, yeah, Q, that’s it. Another step. Okay, one more.”

They let go together and the body drops onto the tarp. Eliot pulls the loose ends over his face, obscuring the rest of the body, but there’s still the pool of blood in the middle of the kitchen floor to deal with it.

They don’t deal with it yet, though, because Eliot starts giving out clipped instructions again and the two of them carry the tarp-wrapped body through the back door, pausing only for Quentin to kick off his sneakers so as to avoid tracking blood across the yard.

As Quentin sways under the weight of the tarp-covered corpse, he’s never been so grateful Eliot lives isolated from neighbors, with no prying eyes to see what was happening on the farm, though perhaps that was the source of the problems to begin with.

Eliot, walking backward and guiding the way, takes them to a spot near the barn, where they drop the tarp.

“Do we start digging or do you want us to clean the kitchen or--?” This is going to take all night. His dad will wake up in a few hours and figure out he’s not there. He has to start planning excuses.

“We should clean the kitchen,” Eliot says.

They leave the corpse where it is and go back inside. Eliot disappears upstairs and Quentin takes the time to find bleach and a plastic bag for his shoes before dropping to his knees on the floor, just outside of the puddle of blood. Eliot settles in beside him, handing him towels and disposable gloves.

They smell like bleach and sweat by the time they finish and Quentin’s arms are sore from scrubbing, but they’re not done yet. He follows Eliot back outside to the barn, stopping only to retrieve his shovel where he left it on the porch.

“I live on a farm, did you seriously think I didn’t own a shovel?” Eliot asks, grabbing his own from inside the barn.

“I’m trying to help you bury a body at three in the morning! Gift horse, mouth.”

They start digging. About a foot down, Quentin is exhausted, though Eliot doesn’t seem to be any more tired than when they started.

“Maybe this is a really bad time to bring this up, but, um, you can do Professor X-type shit with your mind. Couldn’t you, like, make this ditch dig itself? Possibly? Kady said she tried to show you a couple things, maybe--”

“No.”

“Okay,” Quentin goes back to digging.

“I don’t know my own strength and since you’re within twenty miles of me, I’d rather not risk it,” Eliot says. “I think I’m more Jean Grey than Charles Xavier anyway.”

“I mean Xavier sucks,” Quentin says. “If you read the comics. He’s kind of a shithead and Jean’s way better.”

“Does that make you Wolverine?”

Quentin’s fairly sure Eliot’s only seen the movies and feels a little offended that Eliot thinks there’s a scenario in which he could mercy kill him. “Nope. I’d definitely be a Scott Summers.”

Which is the wrong thing to say to someone who’s only watched the movies. Quentin tries backtracking, “In the sense that, um, he’s not shitty and doesn’t kill her. And in the comics he doesn’t suck.”

“You do give off James Marsden energies,” Eliot says, with what Quentin swears is fondness in his voice.

“I do not!”

“No, I could definitely see you losing a girl to Ryan Gosling, and the movie-going audience would feel really bad for you, but not quite enough for it to counteract their support for Ryan and Rachel.”

“I think I hate you,” Quentin says, but he’s grinning.

Eliot grins back at him, and it almost meets his eyes. Almost, but not quite, so Quentin doesn’t feel bad when he changes the subject to something more serious.

“Um, have you thought at all about what you’re going to do once we’re done? Your brothers are all out of the house now, but if your dad goes missing, they’ll come back. And do you want to call him in as missing yourself or…? Do you have a story?”

Eliot shrugs, panting a little as he keeps digging.

“El,” Quentin says. “We have to figure this out.”

Eliot’s grip on the shovel tightens.

“Okay, so here’s what I think. You give it two days. You tell the rest of our-- our friends that you haven’t seen your dad and you’ve been enjoying that he’s gone. Then on day three, you call the cops to say you think he’s missing, that you haven’t seen him in a few days but aren’t sure when exactly he disappeared.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“You have to,” Quentin says. “I’m not letting you go to jail for murder. There’s no way it wouldn’t look bad, he was stabbed with like twenty knives. I know it was self-defense, but it wouldn’t look that way.”

“You don’t know that it was self-defense,” Eliot interrupts.

“I know you, though,” Quentin shoots down Eliot's attempt at pushing him away. They've made it this far; he's not letting Eliot pull this shit on him now. “Anyway, my point stands. It doesn’t look that way and you’re almost eighteen; they’d try you as an adult for sure.”

“I really don’t care,” Eliot looks up at Quentin, exhausted, “I don’t care, Q. Two people are dead because of me and now you’re-- I’ve fucking made you an accomplice.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“But I do! I don’t give a shit about what happens to me at this point. Logan and Dad were assholes and they deserved bad shit to happen to them, but not by me! Not like this, not… psychic murder bullshit. And now you’re going to take the fall for it with me and I can’t _believe_ I let you get this far.”

“Let’s just focus on not getting caught,” Quentin says. “And we won’t have to worry about anything else.”

They dig in silence the rest of the way, until they’re six feet down and they clamber up the ladder Eliot had brought down for them around the four foot mark.

They both flinch at the _thump-crack_ when the tarp-wrapped body hits the bottom of the pit. Quentin starts to pick up his shovel again, but Eliot catches his wrist.

“Wait, let me try--” He glances at the pile of dirt, then back at Quentin. “Um, can you stand behind the barn. If I’m doing this, I don’t want you--”

Quentin blinks, not sure where he’s headed

“I’m going to try to fill it in with magic.”

“Oh! Yeah, of course. I’ll be right here if you need me.”

Quentin jogs to the barn and waits behind the door, closes his eyes, and counts the seconds as they tick by.

A minute later, Eliot enters the barn. “I got it.”

Quentin darts around him to survey the ditch. It’s almost imperceptible that the dirt had ever been disturbed, to the point that a small patch of lilies grows up in the middle of it.

“I didn’t mean to do the flowers,” Eliot mutters.

“We did it,” Quentin breathes. “Okay. Good. Um, did you want to say-- No, no that’s stupid. Um. We should burn our clothes now probably.”

Eliot drags a metal trash can out from the barn and sets it before them. He pulls off one shoe, then the other, depositing them into the can. Quentin dumps the plastic bag containing his bloody shoes in, then peels off his sweater.

Eliot’s hands are shaking too hard to take off the buttons on his shirt. Whether it’s from the fact that they just dug a six foot deep hole or the fact that the hole now contains his father’s corpse, it’s difficult to tell. Quentin reaches to help, but finds he’s the same amount of unsteady and is equally unsure of the exact source.

“Just rip them off, it doesn’t matter,” Eliot says, and Quentin yanks, hard, and the buttons pop off the shirt and go scattering onto the ground. Quentin drops to pick them up and it takes an eternity to find each one and keep his hands steady enough to drop them all into the trash can. When he gets up, Eliot is frozen where he was before, shirt hanging open.

“El?”

He doesn’t move. Quentin steps in, gauging Eliot’s response, then catches the shoulder of his shirt in hand and starts easing it down his arms. Eliot blinks a few times, but doesn’t move or say anything else, even as Quentin drops the shirt into the can. Quentin pulls off his own sweat-slick t-shirt, then moves to his jeans, at which point Eliot seems to regain his composure and takes his jeans off too, pausing to save the lighter and pack of cigarettes from the back pocket. And then they’re both standing barefoot in their boxers. Eliot passes a cigarette and the lighter to Quentin, which Quentin accepts awkwardly; he barely even smokes weed at this point. Eliot lights his own cigarette, then drops the lighter into the can, their clothes immediately going up in flames.

Without saying anything else, they slip back to the house and up to the bathroom together. Quentin starts the water and Eliot steps out to his room and then returns a moment later with an armful of clothes.

Quentin contemplates showering separately, but in the time it takes for him to ponder the etiquette in a situation such as theirs, Eliot’s stripped off his boxers and is stepping past him into the shower. Quentin, unwilling to let Eliot out of his sight, steps in after him.

If he’s honest with himself, which he tries to be, Quentin has at least a few fantasies involving showering and Eliot. This is not like any of them and given the circumstances feels relatively unerotic. The way he looks at Eliot now is pure concern, watching the way he carries himself, careful to make sure there’s no blood left on either of them.

“You’ve got dirt in your hair,” Eliot mutters. His fingers dig into Quentin’s hair, scratching down to his scalp and giant clods of dirt fall out and into the drain.

Relatively unerotic.

They’re incredibly close now and Quentin reaches out to wipe some of the dirt off Eliot’s nose, fingertips just brushing against the bruise on Eliot’s cheek. He looks up at Eliot, a question in his eye, but Eliot doesn’t acknowledge it and stays focused on washing the dirt from Quentin’s hair.

They’re both too unsteady to try anything more than rising the dirt and blood off, but even without soap or shampoo, Quentin feels better and Eliot looks better, so he hopes the reverse is also true for both of them.

When they get out, Quentin pulls on Eliot’s clothes -- a worn flannel and a pair of sweats -- which are too long and make him feel even shorter than he usually does, but he rolls up the sleeves and pant legs with determination.

“Don’t laugh,” Quentin mutters as he looks back at Eliot, who’s wearing a t-shirt and a pair of jeans.

“You should go home before your dad realizes you stole the car and helped bury a body.”

“We should both go to school,” Quentin replies. “They’ll figure it out if we skip. Just… come with me, I’ll say you slept over or something.”

“Okay,” Eliot sounds more resigned than actually in agreement, but he returns with Quentin to the car, grabbing his backpack on the way.

The drive goes by in silence, back through the country roads as dawn is just beginning to break. It’s not unpleasant silence, but it is noticeable enough that Quentin feels on edge when they pull up the drive.

The sight of Ted Coldwater awake and waiting for them in the garage puts him over that edge. Ted has his most severe dad-look on, the kind he’s only ever broken out once before, when Quentin had thrown a ball through a neighbor’s window when he was eight. It’s a look that says Quentin is very, very grounded, but Quentin thinks he would happily take being grounded over prison.

Quentin climbs out of the car and is met with a sharp, “Quentin Makepeace Coldwater!”

He winces, but shuffles forward, Eliot trailing after him. “Hey, Dad.”

He feels his dad giving him the once over and, oh yeah, he’s wearing Eliot’s clothes. Great.

“Eliot,” Ted greets him with a less harsh tone, but he still sounds displeased. Eliot bobs his head in greeting. Ted puts his hands on his hips and eyes Quentin, “I woke up and there was no car and you weren’t in your bed. You didn’t answer your phone. How was I supposed to--? I was about to send the cops out looking for you.”

There’s a panic in his dad’s voice and Quentin realizes, guilt growing in his chest, what his dad must have assumed when his suicidally depressed teenage son took the car he can’t legally drive in the middle of the night without a word.

“I’m sorry,” Quentin says. He tries to look a normal amount of upset about it, but _god_ he just buried a body, so he can’t keep his shit together. He feels tears oncoming. He has to find something else to shift this onto, make his reaction somewhat justified, make it--

The solution is so easy, Quentin doesn’t know how it didn’t occur to him earlier. He’s wearing Eliot’s clothes, for God’s sake. It’s not even technically untrue, though he certainly never imagined the conversation happening this way.

He grabs Eliot’s hand in his, garnering a confused look from Eliot, and pulls himself as straight as he can. “I shouldn’t have snuck out like that, but it’s been really hard. I’ve been trying not to tell anyone about me and Eliot at school. The kids are already assholes to him and I didn’t know if I could handle it, with how my brain is sometimes. It just seemed like a bad idea to be out, but it’s still shitty. There’s not a whole lot of times and places we can be together. I didn’t mean to be out so late; we fell asleep talking.”

“You and Eliot?” Ted’s eyes flick between the two of them and their joined hands.

“I’m bisexual,” Quentin says, cementing that this is indeed his coming out. “Eliot and I are...”

“Boyfriends,” Eliot supplies. He’s always had a penchant for theatrics, so he leans in closer to Quentin, their arms pressed up against each other, and he looks at Ted while ducking his head with a perfect amount of put-on nervousness. “I’m sorry, Mr. Coldwater. It’s my fault. We were texting and he seemed really upset so I told him to come over.”

There’s a long beat of Ted just staring at the pair of them, wheels turning his head.

“Um,” Ted rubs his eyes. “Okay. Quentin, I-- You know you’re safe here, right? You don’t have to hide anything from me, I love you no matter what.”

“Yeah, Dad,” Quentin says. “Thanks.”

Ted sighs. “I’m going to drive you boys to school. Q, you and I will be talking about this later, because the car thing is still-- Not good. You’re in trouble for that, understand?”

“Yessir,” Quentin nods.

“Did you two want breakfast? There’s still a little bit of time before school, you can grab some cereal or--?” he seems to fully look at what Quentin’s wearing and raises an eyebrow. “Change your clothes?”

“Yeah,” Quentin nods. “Yeah, I’ll, um, change really quick.”

He starts toward the door to the house and it’s only when Ted clears his throat that he realizes Eliot’s hand is still locked in his. He lets go, shooting Eliot an apologetic look for leaving him alone with his dad, then races up to his room to change in record time. By the time he gets back down, he’s sure it’s been less than three minutes, and the atmosphere in the garage is the same level of uneasy awkwardness.

Quentin and Eliot clamber into the backseat and Quentin takes his hand again, this time for purely anxiety-related reasons. Eliot squeezes it lightly.

Ted watches Quentin and Eliot through the rearview mirror the entire ride to school, an act which makes Quentin supremely uncomfortable, but he can’t hold it against his dad because as far as he knows, the only thing that’s happened is that his only son just outed himself and his apparent boyfriend and confided in him about school being hard. Dads love that shit, especially Ted.

“I love you, Q,” Ted says when he drops them off, a little forced but with a warmth that makes Quentin feel guilty. Ted looks to Eliot next, which surprises Quentin, “Eliot, you’re-- You’ll always be welcome in our house.”

Eliot smiles an empty smile and slides out of the car after Quentin. They watch as Ted drives away and Eliot leans into Quentin’s shoulder, “Did you just out yourself to your father for me?”

“It’s not a big deal,” Quentin says.

“And implied we’re… a thing.”

Quentin shrugs and repeats, “It’s not a big deal.”

“Yeah, it is. You’re already facing life in prison because of me, potentially. You don’t need to ruin your love life for me too.”

“What love life?” Quentin makes a show of looking around. “Julia’s shacked up with James. Alice won’t give me the time of day. And I am bi, by the way, but it’s not like being out is a great idea here. I mean that part was true, you didn’t get the choice to be out or not and your life is hell.”

“Thanks, Q,” Eliot grimaces.

“I just mean-- It’s not this huge burden, okay. We already spend a lot of time together.” _And I’ve fantasized about showering with you before and even if this last time was really unsexy due to the whole dead body part, I’d love to do it again. We don’t have to_ fake _dating._ But trying to tell Eliot any of that in light of recent events seems… intense. And not the best idea.

They walk into school together and Quentin remembers their first periods are on opposite ends of the building. He gets close to ditching, but he remembers the hot water he’s in with his dad already and reluctantly parts ways with Eliot.

Josh is the only one of Quentin’s friends in first period, but he sits nowhere near him and is usually asleep for half the class anyway. Today is no exception and Quentin is able to disassociate through most of it, which is not _nice_ exactly, but definitely just where he’s at.

Second period is with Margo and Eliot, but Margo’s on an extended vacation with her family, so she’s absent, which Quentin supposes explains why Eliot didn’t call her to help bury his dad. Nothing short of a twelve hour plane trip out of the country could keep those two apart.

Quentin watches Eliot the entire class, every time he can sneak a peek at him without it being too obvious. Eliot seems zoned out, but it’s a very put-together, unsuspicious level of zoned out.

They sit with the rest of their friends during lunch. Quentin being not-all-there isn’t abnormal, but he and Eliot are both hyper-fixating on not thinking about _it_ for fear of Penny figuring it out. Penny’s too busy sticking his tongue down Kady’s throat to notice or care about them beyond giving them a weird look.

Julia picks up on something, but Quentin tells her it’s a depression flare-up, which he probably shouldn’t have said because she immediately looks concerned and Alice starts asking if he’s been taking his meds.

Quentin would’ve tried the coming out routine on them too, if he hadn’t already come out to Julia in eighth grade and to Alice in an attempt at solidarity after their brief fling sophomore year that ended in Alice announcing she was a lesbian.

The rest of the school day drags by, but Quentin gets through it and takes the bus back home. Eliot is too numb to protest against Quentin dragging him along.

“Things are hard at home right now,” Quentin says, when Ted gives him a look as he walks through the front door with Eliot in tow. “And Margo’s out of town so he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“I can find another place,” Eliot says quietly, but Quentin shakes his head and loops his arm through Eliot’s, not entirely sure this is just for show.

“Please,” Quentin says. “You can chew me out, just let him crash in my room for now.”

Ted gives in, “Okay. Yeah, Eliot, you can go to Q’s room while we talk.”

Eliot nods and sprints up the stairs away from the father-son drama that Quentin is sure is about to ensue.

Ted watches Eliot disappear into Quentin’s room, then looks back at him seriously, “You know, if you’re into guys then maybe you should-- I mean, with girls you always had to have your door open, I guess it should be the same rule for --?”

Quentin flushes, “Oh my god, are you serious?”

“Well it just seems like-- Nevermind. Uh, we need to talk about the car. You can’t drive on your own, legally, so that’s about seventy percent of my problem with what happened last night. The other thirty being the whole sneaking out stunt. Now, I understand you were trying to see your secret boyfriend and school is hard and I-- I’m not going to ban you from seeing him. That’s… I mean, I can’t do that, can I?”

“It’d be really shitty if you did,” Quentin agrees.

“So how about this: Eliot can visit, or stay here if that’s what’s going down at his home, but if he sleeps over it has to be downstairs, on the couch, and you have to be in your room by eight for the next two weeks.”

“That’s--” Eight is so goddamn early, but he’s not really in a place to be bartering. “That’s more than fair, Dad.”

“Well I thought so,” Ted says. “Um, Q. If anything happens at school or I need to talk to anyone about anything--”

“I’m gonna stay closeted,” Quentin says. “Graduation is in a month so coming out at this point would be stupid.”

Ted nods, looking at him fondly and Quentin thinks of Eliot and his dead dad, feels a rush of emotions that he can’t contain any longer, and bursts into tears. He stands there, hands at his sides, sobbing, and then feels his dad’s arms around him, strong and safe.

“Hey, Q, it’s okay.”

Quentin’s sobs turn near hysteric, “I love you too-- I know-- we don’t always get along-- and sometimes I do stupid shit or-- and my brain breaks and it doesn’t seem like I do-- but I really do! I love you.”

He can hear his dad sniffling above him and Quentin just hangs onto him.

“Between last night and today, you’re kind of scaring the shit out of me, Q,” Ted says, voice straining to be lighthearted.

“I’m sorry,” Quentin wipes his eyes and pulls back. “Sorry.”

“Just let me know if there’s anything I can do. _Anything_.”

Quentin nods and sniffles a bit more.

“You should go, uh, be with your boyfriend while you can,” Ted says. “You know, I always liked him.”

No parent has ever said that about Eliot Waugh before in his life, not even Margo’s parents, and it makes Quentin’s heart warm to hear it, even if he’s not quite sure how his dad means it.

Quentin slips up the stairs to his room, where Eliot sits on his bed, flipping through a textbook with a blank stare.

“Hey,” Quentin says, leaning in the doorway. “My dad told me we have to keep the door cracked open so we don’t have sex.”

Eliot laughs and it just touches his eyes this time. Quentin leaves the door ajar as requested and settles onto the bed across from Eliot. He takes a breath, thinks _this is the worst timing,_ and then leans across and kisses Eliot on the mouth.

Eliot pulls away, not rejecting, exactly, just watching him, “Q, what are you doing?”

“Um, so, I know that we just did something really intense and we’re not in the right mindset and I could spend the next few weeks overthinking it until I’m blue in the face, but we’re graduating in like a month and then there’s college and we could also both go to prison before any of that happens so I’d really just like to kiss you while I can.”

A warmth settles in Eliot’s eyes and he kisses Quentin back.

* * *

Eliot reports his father missing after three days. His brothers return from their own families out of town to help with the search and though they take their time interrogating Eliot themselves, they don’t pay him much attention after they determine he's just the spaced-out, weirdo little brother they always knew.

Eliot turns eighteen within two months of his dad’s “disappearance” and he’s able to spend the time leading up to it split between Quentin’s couch and Margo’s spare room. She's the only other person who knows; they keep it a secret from the rest of the group. Penny probably at least suspects something, but he doesn’t say anything about it and they’re grateful.

Quentin knows Eliot is waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the investigation is half-assed at best and not turning anything up that could point to them.

“It’s something like seven years before a person is declared dead in absentia but they’ve done the bulk of their investigating, no one actually gives a shit about my dad, and it’s like… I think we did it?” Eliot says, as they’re sitting on Quentin’s bed together one summer afternoon when Ted is at work.

“I think we did,” Quentin agrees. “I mean someone could always dig it up, but you can run off to Europe before that happens.”

“Q, do you think this is all magic is?" Eliot asks, distant. "Accidental murder?”

“Kady’s mom does small magic that’s just fixing things and making little lights. And Alice’s parents apparently do weird sex magic stuff, right? So there has to be more out there.”

“There might not be for me, though. Maybe this is all I can do…" Eliot stares off toward the window. Quentin opens his mouth to object, but Eliot continues on, turning back to him now. "Anyway, I like your magic the best. Card tricks and making things disappear.”

Quentin wants to tell him none of that’s _real_ magic, not like what Eliot can do, but he says it with such conviction and Quentin doesn’t want to argue with him.

“And making things better,” Eliot adds. “That’s your magic, Q. You make everything better.”

(Just shy of a decade later, when Quentin finds out his discipline is, indeed, making things better, Eliot will just shrug with an _I told you so_ look in his eyes.)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to the squad on the queliot writers discord for letting me babble at them way too much while i was finishing this.
> 
> im on tumblr [@everytuesdaylove](https://everytuesdaylove.tumblr.com)


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